The business of facelift aftercare is booming.
Hi from Cannes 🇫🇷
Good morning, everyone.
I’m writing this newsletter from the South of France, where I’ll be attending the Cannes Lions festival this week. Last night, I attended Casey Lewis’s party with Day One Agency, where I finally met OpenAI’s Charles Porch and Breaking and Entering’s Jack Westerkamp in the flesh. At least one attendee found out that Olivia Newton-John died in 2022 after asking about Jack’s Olivia Newton-John t-shirt.
During a smoke break at dinner, I compared logo stickers with Popcast’s Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli.
This morning, the warm streets of Cannes felt like LinkedIn in-person. Between coffee meetings with the Capital One team and Spotify team, I spotted Oren John running across the street. I ran into two of my former Meta colleagues in the Chanel store. Someone working on a laptop outside of the Carlton said they read Feed Me. If you’re in town and want to grab a drink, hit my line.
Today’s newsletter includes: New York Magazine’s new Hamptons issue, Anonymous Transit Expert is back, and an update on Expense Account.
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Celebrate America’s Birthday with Big Boy
Feed Me’s Anonymous Transit Expert writes a column called Stand Clear. He has to stay anonymous because he has a Real Job in a Real Office.
Eighty-five years ago, at what is now the headquarters of a heavily-indebted regional grocer, 1.2 million pounds of steel rolled out of the American Locomotive Company’s Schenectady, NY plant and headed west. Twenty-five more locomotives followed, and the Union Pacific’s “Big Boy” fleet, built to haul war matériel and heavy supplies over the Wasatch Mountains, stayed west of the Mississippi River until its retirement in the early sixties. Real rail sickos will tell you that actually there were other steam trains with more traction, and actually the C&O Allegheny made more horsepower. Pay them no mind. It doesn’t matter what the stat sheets say. Those other trains can’t go anywhere but a museum. Big Boy has joie de vivre, it’s a gleaming symbol of American industrial excellence and if you live anywhere along this route you can (and should) go see it for yourself.
This year, to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, the patron of the Big Boy and its pending merger partner, Norfolk Southern, are presenting as extra patriotic. It’s just one of the many Very Special land-air-and-sea activations transportation companies are rolling out for America250. Norfolk Southern, on top of participating in the Big Boy world tour, served up six special liveries. Not to be outdone, UP’s designs are a little more overt and include the shimmering white No. 4547, which did not prevent presidential spitballing over the U.S. Government taking a stake in an unnamed freight railroad.
Metro North, the LIRR, the D.C. Metro, the big three airlines, and, I’m sure, most other passenger carriers, all have some special wrapping ready to go, as well. If you’d rather ruminate about the Semiquincentennial with the 19th century than the 20th, Sail4th 250 promises to fill New York harbor with tall ships and aircraft over Independence Day weekend. Looking backward, it’s been a pretty easy-to-celebrate 250 years of getting around.
Looking forward, we’re going to spend more constructing data centers this year than transit infrastructure, after just three months ago being on pace to spend more on data centers than office properties. The 25 Big Boys, all told, cost an estimated $145 million inflation-adjusted dollars, or less than one Boeing 747 cargo aircraft. The Boys (and the Boeing) physically connected Americans to one another, and American goods to the world. Their output was and remains real, tangible, measurable. Railroad speculation may have caused, in ever-grander fashion, the financial panics of 1837, ‘57, ‘73, and ‘93, but American capital learned its lesson and there thankfully hasn’t been a wave of infrastructure malinvestment to speak of since. This time every year, as waves of summer leisure travel strain our systems, but especially this year, I tend to wonder: What will it take to build America again, and who will build our Big Boy if companies like Boom Supersonic are being paperclip maximized?
We’re launching the second season of Expense Account — Feed Me’s food and culture podcast hosted by J Lee — with the Obamas’ production company Higher Ground!
Casa Magazines reported selling out of (then restocking) the June 22 issue of The New Yorker with the exuberant Knicks cover, “After the Comeback.” Knicks fans purchasing one-off commemorative copies were greeted on the inside of the issue by an essay about Habermas, an investigation into the US plan to take over Greenland, and the 10,351-word Ken Griffin profile, which details his fondness for McDonalds, Häagen-Daaz, Call of Duty, his $1.5 billion worth of homes, and his $2 billion worth of art. (Copies are now going for $100 on eBay.)
Moments after reading about a woman in her 30s who got a mini facelift, I read my former boss Michele Promaulayko’s piece about being her friend’s post-facelift nurse. Over the weekend, The Hollywood Reporter published a guide to the best luxury hotels to stay at post-facelift. The Four Seasons, Peninsula, and the Beverly Hills Hotel all offer 24/7 nursing services.
Scottish fans drank Boston dry of beer. That’s what you get when you schedule two games for Scotland six days apart in the same city.
Eileen at Peter McManus was serving during the US-Australia game and told us about her Substack, Life Behind Bars, about her decades pouring pints.
From the Feed Me Tip Line: “There’s a property for auction in the Catskills that also has the ‘ONLY KNOWN STONE MAZE OF ITS KIND BUILT SINCE ANTIQUITY’ on its grounds. Sotheby’s Concierge Auctions sale, including: ‘1,680± ft stone labyrinth completed 1965 by British sculptor Michael Ayrton ... Original bronze sculptures of Daedalus, Icarus, and the Minotaur; Recognized by Time magazine in 1969.’ Beautiful house and property too. I’m conflicted this is being sold,... a friend of a friend’s.... Storm King should buy this maze and relocate it!”
Matt Vella, who edited FT Weekend Magazine, is leaving after 5 years. I enjoyed reading this thread of lessons he learned from the job.
New York Magazine published their now-annual “Hamptons issue” this morning. I’m told “lucky riders on 5 eastbound Hampton jitney rides will receive complimentary copies of the issue, and we’ll have a news box with issues at the Southampton Jitney station for a few weeks.”
TARTAN ARMY MENTIONED IN FEED ME 🏴🏴🏴🏴
First Zuckerberg now the Obamas. You are KILLING me Emily Sundberg!